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A broken promise on Guantanamo

Signing statement falls short of action needed

By Erika Stutzman

Posted:
01/06/2013 01:00:00 AM MST

Using a procedure he decried in his predecessor, President Barack Obama issued a signing statement this week on the defense bill he signed. It serves as a reminder that one of his very first promises to the world -- that the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay would be shut down -- remains unmet.

A reported 166 or so men remain at the prison. About 780 people had been brought there in stages; 8 have died, most by suicide. And about 600 have been released -- most without ever being charged.

Obama signed the Defense Authorization Act of 2013 -- a sweeping $633 billion bill -- but issued an official statement saying that provisions of the act interfered with the executive branch's authority, including on ways to either try prisoners in court or to transfer prisoners to foreign countries.

Such signing statements, which soared under President George W. Bush and had been criticized by Obama -- met with the ire of the American Bar Association, which says that questioning the constitutional powers of certain provisions of laws muddies the separation of powers between the branches.

In other words, just veto it already. An idea that is complicated by the fact that getting anything else out of the ineffective Congress sounds like a pipe dream.

But the authorization did more than tweak the legal establishment.

"The administration blames Congress for making it harder to close Guantanamo, yet for a second year President Obama has signed damaging congressional restrictions into law," said Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel and advocate at Human Rights Watch. "The burden is on Obama to show he is serious about closing the prison."

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"This law makes it harder for the President to fulfill his promise to close the Guantanamo detention facility, perpetuating a grave injustice against the detainees held without charge or fair trial," said Frank Jannuzi, deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA. "Solutions for ending human rights violations, not excuses, must be found."

No, Obama didn't open the detention facility. History is no doubt going to judge the establishment of it harshly -- murky in legal standing, with men who were never charged or tried, and a history of actions that defy the Geneva Conventions. On Friday, it will mark its 11th anniversary.

But it was the Obama administration's promise and responsibility to shut it down. It can be expected that certain hurdles will obstruct even the most common-sense campaign promises made before the first term in the White House, but there is no excuse this time. For our standing in the world as a country that expects and conducts fair justice, the detention center must be shuttered as promised and the detainees must be granted due process under the law.

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